Four of the five Canadian world junior players charged with sexual assault stemming from a June 2018 incident in London, Ont., have been cut loose by their NHL teams after not being tendered a qualifying offer before Sunday’s deadline.

Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers, Dillon Dubé of the Calgary Flames, and Michael McLeod and Cal Foote of the New Jersey Devils are all now unrestricted free agents. They had each been on paid leave from their teams since late January, when they were ordered to surrender to London Police Service to face sexual assault charges.

A trial date has yet to be set. It was up to each team to decide if they wanted to issue a qualifying offer by Sunday’s 5 p.m. ET deadline to retain the NHL rights of those players, and the Flyers, Flames and Devils all decided against it.

Had they done so, and the offers been accepted (which they almost certainly would have been), the players would have continued to be paid while remaining on leave as the legal process played out through what could end up being all of next season.

There are currently no restrictions around their ability to sign with another team right away, deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed to The Athletic on Sunday night. But it will likely be difficult for any of them to do so, given all of the uncertainty around their situations.

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association had discussions in recent weeks about potentially freezing the status of the players until a trial was held, according to league sources familiar with those talks, but couldn’t reach an agreement on how to make that work.

It’s possible that Hart, Dubé, McLeod and Foote explore opportunities to continue their careers in Europe — as Alex Formenton, the fifth player charged alongside them, did the last two seasons in Switzerland with HC Ambrì-Piotta.

Formenton’s NHL rights will remain with the Ottawa Senators through July 1, 2027, because he received a qualifying offer that he didn’t accept following the 2021-22 NHL season and was then moved to their reserve list.

The five players are facing charges for a June 2018 incident inside a room at the Delta London Armouries Hotel following a Hockey Canada Gala at which the world junior team was celebrated for its gold-medal win.

Two counts of sexual assault were brought against McLeod, and one each for Dubé, Foote, Formenton and Hart.

Required reading

(Photo: Andy Devlin / Getty Images)

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SPIELBERG, Austria — Over the past three seasons, the combination of Max Verstappen and the Red Bull car has proven so potent that the rest of the Formula One field has only seriously challenged him on rare occasions.

And over the past few races, that has changed.

Lando Norris snared victory in Miami, closed late on Verstappen at Imola, and could have won in Canada and Spain, only for small errors to cost him. At no point had he truly raced Verstappen. Their friendship, sharing flights and padel courts, has stayed strong.

But on Sunday at the Austrian Grand Prix, the inevitable happened: Verstappen and Norris raced for real, raced hard, and it ended in a collision that will test the bonds between them.

“It’s just a bit reckless,” Norris said in the media pen after the race, downbeat from having a shot at victory snatched away. “It seemed like (it was) a little bit desperate from his side.”

How Red Bull put Verstappen in trouble

It was a crash that shouldn’t have been likely in the first place. Verstappen was in total control right up to his pit stop on Lap 51 of 71. His only slight bugbears were the traffic, the lack of blue flags at times as he lapped cars, and one slower pit stop.

But a second, terribly slow pit stop from Red Bull, the slickest and quickest crew in the F1 grid, put Verstappen in trouble. A stop that usually takes around two seconds took 6.5 seconds due to an issue getting the left-rear wheel nut on, wiping away the buffer to Norris.

One battle, two different viewpoints 🗣️🗣️#F1 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/5aUbIoTVG4

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 30, 2024

Verstappen was calm in the media pen after the race, seemingly more disappointed in the execution by Red Bull than the clash itself. He called it an “awful” race and said the team “did a lot of things wrong today,” citing the strategy that left him battling traffic along with the “disaster” pit stops. “You give free lap time, six seconds over those two pit stops, then, of course, it’s a race again,” Verstappen said. “That’s why we put ourselves in that position.”

The added complication for Verstappen was that he had a lightly used set of medium tires instead of the fresh set Norris could run, giving the McLaren the grip advantage. As they weaved through traffic, Norris could easily sit within DRS range of Verstappen and start plotting where to make his move.

Aggression meets aggression

“When I need to, and the time comes to race him, I 100 percent will.”

Norris’s promise in an interview with The Athletic at Suzuka would always be tested at some point. And he quickly made good on it with his lunges on Verstappen.

On Lap 59, Norris went for his first attempt to overtake Verstappen at the top of the hill into Turn 3, a wide corner with plenty of room for a send up the inside. Norris briefly got ahead, only to run off the track and have Verstappen sweep back ahead on the run to Turn 4. Verstappen immediately alerted his engineer to the off-track move, noting that Norris had already been shown a black and white flag, a last warning for exceeding track limits. As a fourth strike, this would trigger a five-second penalty, only issued after Norris was out of the race.

Norris claimed he’d been pushed off by Verstappen and continued to attack undeterred. Verstappen complained on the radio that Norris was “dive-bombing,” and in the media pen, he described the moves as “just sending it up late and hoping the other guy stays out of it and you make the corner, which wasn’t the case.”

Norris kept the pressure on while the stewards investigated the track limits breach, going for another move at the same corner four laps later. This time, the Red Bull went off the track. He stayed ahead, prompting a radio complaint from Norris, who had already called out Verstappen for illegally moving under braking (moving laterally while slowing down). Verstappen said he was forced off. Classic gamesmanship from both.

And then, on Lap 64, the clash happened. Verstappen covered the inside and squeezed Norris, his car drifting slightly to the left. The side-on collision left both with damage and a long crawl back to the pits. Verstappen recovered to finish fifth, while Norris was forced to retire. Mercedes’ George Russell scooped up the win, followed by Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz.

Hard racing or over the limit?

Before his current dominant run, Verstappen made his name in F1 for a hard, no-holds-barred approach to wheel-to-wheel racing. When a driver fights him, there’s no surprise in what they get in return.

“I expect a tough battle against Max, I know what to expect,” Norris said. “I expect aggression and pushing the limits and that kind of thing. But all three times, he’s doing stuff that can easily cause an incident.” He added he was “in a way not surprised” by the clash but felt disappointed not to get “tough, fair, respectful, on-the-edge racing” in the battle for the win. “There’s times where I think he goes a little bit too far,” Norris added.

Verstappen denied crossing a line, claiming he hadn’t moved under braking in their battle. He noted Norris’s “dive-bombs” and called the stewards’ 10-second time penalty — they said Verstappen was “predominantly at fault” due to his shift to the left — “a bit severe.” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner described it as a racing incident. “Max is a hard racer, and they know that,” he said.

Norris’ challenge has revived Verstappen’s dormant penchant for hard racing. (James Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Verstappen is a hard racer, yes. That’s partly why this was always going to happen. He hasn’t been pushed like this since the peak of his fight against Hamilton in 2021. Now Norris and McLaren have a package capable of not just challenging Verstappen but beating him, prompting a return of these more aggressive on-track tactics, which are more likely to result in such incidents.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella felt the stewards should have shown Verstappen the black and white warning flag for moving under braking, as it would have made the Red Bull driver “much more prudent in closing the door on Lando.”

“It’s a great battle, but there’s no need to act so desperately,” Stella said. “There’s no need to think that the world is going to finish if the overtaking maneuver by the car behind is going to be completed.”

Was it inevitable? Horner used that word twice post-race. “You could see this building perhaps for a couple of races,” he said. “At some point, there was going to be something close between the two of them.”

Verstappen didn’t want to think that way. “It’s never how I thought about stuff,” he said. “But close battles, sometimes these things happen which you never want to happen.”

Will Norris and Verstappen clear the air?

The Austria clash is a flash point in the competitive and personal relationship between Norris and Verstappen, who look a step ahead of the rest of the pack in F1 right now, as seen so plainly in Sunday’s race.

The pair have shared many cool-down rooms and press conferences in the last 12 months, regularly joking and bantering. Now, there’s a tension that showed little sign of cooling in the heat of the immediate aftermath of the collision. Norris wasn’t interested in being the one to extend an olive branch or look to clear the air. “It’s not for me to say,” he said. “It’s for him to say.”

Verstappen said there’d be a chance for them to talk, but it was “not the right moment,” and it was “better to cool down.” He said they had already not planned to travel back together to Monaco, as they’ve done after other races this season.

Verstappen said he hoped it wouldn’t damage their relationship. “We’re all racing drivers, of course you don’t want to crash into each other,” he said. “When you’re fighting for the lead, it’s always tough battles. It happened today. It’s always a shame. I’m annoyed, he’s annoyed. I think that’s fair.”

Verstappen is right that there will be a right moment for reconciliation. You can already predict the shared Instagram post of the two together smiling, a sign to the world that everything is OK. Friends again.

Yet as long as the margins between Norris and Verstappen remain so close on the track and as we see such intense battles more often, their dynamic will continue to be tested.

Which, after so long without that kind of competitive edge, is a thrilling prospect for F1.

(Lead image: Rudy Carezzevoli, ERWIN SCHERIAU/APA/AFP via Getty Images)

Follow live coverage of Argentina vs Peru and Canada vs Chile at 2024 Copa America today

We’ll get to the Panama game in a bit, but first, think back to December 2022.

The United States men’s national team had just been eliminated from the World Cup by the Netherlands, losing in the round of 16 by a 3-1 margin. A nation was looking for answers: why couldn’t Gregg Berhalter’s side get the job done?

“When you look at the difference between the two teams; to me, there was some offensive finishing quality that we are lacking a bit,” Berhalter said of the second-youngest squad among the 32 in that tournament. “It is normal. We have a very young group and they are going to catch up to that.”

Ah, youth. There’s nothing more exciting in soccer than the concept of potential; the promise that for as good as a player or team may be now, just wait until they find their sea legs. With experience is supposed to come the intangibles that round out an athletic skill set. These are often the traits that turn a good player into a great one: an ​​erudite reading of the game or an otherworldly ability to anticipate the opponent’s next move, to cite a pair.

Still, it can be an underwhelming silver lining to fixate upon after a team is eliminated in a World Cup. Those only come around every four years and besides, there’s no guarantee that a player, much less a collective of them, will have squatter’s rights over national team spots as younger alternatives rise through the ranks.

At a certain point, a person or a team has to show that the proverbial “teachable moments” from past hardships have resonated and will inform better decisions thereafter.

Which brings us to Thursday night in Atlanta.

For a quarter of an hour, the USMNT was up for the challenge. Panama represents the type of foe that Berhalter’s side would welcome in these circumstances. In this all-Americas edition of the Copa America, ostensibly the CONMEBOL (South American) championship, one would think it’s better to face a CONCACAF rival you play regularly than one from a different confederation altogether.

After the final whistle, with his team having suffered a 2-1 defeat, Berhalter and his players repeatedly cited their familiarity with Panama. They knew Panama was a team that would play with chippiness in every action. They knew what Panama was all about and knew the approach they would take in hopes of shocking the tournament hosts.

It begs the question: if you knew where the opponent would lay its traps, why did you end up ensnared by one entirely of your own creation?

Since taking over in 2018, one of the hallmarks of Berhalter’s USMNT tenure has been his ability to stymy, overcome, and eventually run laps around Mexico. For decades, those two teams have fought for supremacy in CONCACAF’s balance of power. As nations such as Costa Rica or Canada enjoyed strong stretches this century, their success was contextualized vis-a-vis the region’s twin powers.

The framing does a disservice to the rest of CONCACAF, a sort of soccer classism built on past pedigree and fame surrounding a nation’s top players. The nature of a group draw, offering every team its next three opponents, inevitably fixates on the perceived “toughest” opponent in the three matches, regardless of their spot in the queue. So when you’re focused on a game against Marcelo Bielsa’s high-flying Uruguay at the end of the group, you risk overlooking the teams you fear less.

Teams like Panama.

Even after watching the highlight of Tim Weah’s 18th-minute red card offense a dozen times (or, perhaps, especially after watching it so often), it’s tough to fathom his decision-making. Before and after the match, the United States emphasized they knew Panama would tap into the dark arts to wrestle control over the game.

Tim Weah receives a red card after review for this contact 🟥 pic.twitter.com/phw8bSzdKR

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 27, 2024

Tim Weah is sent off! 😱

The United States player is shown a straight red for violent conduct 🟥

Big moment in this game… pic.twitter.com/WEmV5B9DKt

— Premier Sports (@PremSportsTV) June 27, 2024

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The thing is, this wasn’t one of those cases. It wasn’t a response to a scything tackle or an incisive elbow behind the referee’s back. It was retaliation for an otherwise nondescript off-ball bump between a defender primed for a challenge and an eager attacker. For that to be the series of events that allowed Panama to play over 70 minutes with a man advantage? It undermines claims of “knowing” what to expect.

Well, maybe that’s unfair. There’s knowing what’s coming and then there’s planning accordingly. The latter part is of greater importance.

(Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

To be fair, the gamesmanship the United States claimed to have expected did present itself.

Chief among the examples was the 12th-minute challenge by Cesar Blackman that saw the Panama player clatter into a defenseless Matt Turner in mid-air without making a serious nod toward the ball. Goalkeeper Turner suffered a knee injury in the process, which may have limited his mobility when Blackman placed an equalizer into the net just 14 minutes later.

Of course, Blackman escaped the collision without seeing a yellow card, but that’s another story.

In a cruel twist, the player who seemed poised to bring the “offensive finishing quality” that Berhalter longed for in 2022 did his part. Even after Weah’s red card and before Blackman’s goal, Folarin Balogun opened the scoring with the kind of attempt that only a special striker could confidently convert.

(Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

The USMNT fought valiantly in the second half after Berhalter made a trio of adjustments to replace Turner with a fresh goalkeeper, withdraw one midfielder to add another defender, and swap out defensive midfielders to ensure stability. In theory, a 1-1 draw would have done wonders for the hosts, putting them on four points and Panama on one with one game each remaining.

GO DEEPER

What the USMNT needs to qualify for Copa America quarterfinals

Eventually, Panama’s extensive ownership of possession (74%, or 72% when only considering touches in each attacking third) gave them enough time to turn one point into three. As Christian Pulisic succinctly put it after the game, “it’s not so easy to keep the ball” when you’re playing with one man less. Panama created its best chance of the game in the 80th minute and didn’t waste it.

Weah’s teammates and coach were quick to mention that the Juventus man was contrite after the match, relaying that he’d apologized for his action and the disadvantage it caused. Seemingly, he’ll soon have another chance (whether in the knockouts or after this tournament) to make things right — as others of this generation, including Gio Reyna, Weston McKennie and Sergino Dest have done following their own incidents on and off the pitch.

For now, however, the damage is done. Weah’s ill-advised shove gave Panama an advantage it may not have needed but certainly relished. Tyler Adams referred to Weah’s infraction as a “lesson” to reflect upon for the future. Pulisic assured us that Weah is “gonna learn from it”.

Haven’t we heard this before? Given how infrequently the USMNT can schedule friendlies against teams outside of CONCACAF, is there any excuse left for not having some level of mastery over the finer points of playing rivals within your confederation?

How can a team expect to outfox Uruguay, or one of Brazil or Colombia in a potential quarterfinal — to say nothing of the broader field at a World Cup — if it frequently falls victim to the opponents it knows best?

GO DEEPER

The USMNT are in danger of blowing their big moment

(Top photo: Hector Vivas/Getty Images)